4th January 2010

It's that time of the year, when we all look back at the twelve months just gone and come to some conclusions. It's fair to say that film-wise 2009 was NOT a vintage year: only one brand new film caught my eye as a bona fide 5-star experience, a film I desperately want to see again. Plenty of fours: plenty of films I liked, but hardly anything I absolutely loved. Lots of threes: not bad, kept me awake, tolerable. Rather too many twos: unremarkable, unimpressive, so-so fare at best. And an unhealthy stack of one-star offerings: dismal, dull, pointless and/or offensive.

But we should start with the good stuff and having gone through my exhaustive lists I can tell you that the ten best films of 2009 were as follows. They're not all genre films, and some probably qualify as 2008 films because technically that's when they were made. Well, tough: I can only go by the UK release dates. I'm also not counting festival screenings unless they have come out on regular release (but I will get to them separately). And they're not in order except for the first one, which is:

RED CLIFF - John Woo's barnstorming epic telling you everything you ever wanted to know about fighting a war in 3rd Century China. My favourite film of the year by a considerable distance.
INGLOURIOUS BASTERDS - Yes, it's a lot of fun. I tend to like Tarantino anyway more than I hate him. I'd like to think this might break down the subtitle wall for dumbo multiplex audiences, but I doubt it will.
THE HURT LOCKER - Blistering stuff. Beautifully made and extremely tense, and thoroughly engrossing; and that's even though war movies tend not to be my thing.
AVATAR (in 3D) - Whatever the deficiencies in the dialogue (which is awful) and the characterisation (which is cardboard), and whether you like wearing the spectacles or not, it's a stunning piece of work on a purely visual level.
ZOMBIELAND - Bizarrely, because it's not actually a zombie movie, but a romantic comedy-cum-road movie that just happens to have zombies in it.
THE INTERNATIONAL - I watched it again on DVD and it still works pretty well, though admittedly the gunfight in the Guggenheim goes on a bit. I love the architecture: all glass and cold concrete.
TERMINATOR SALVATION - I know I shouldn't, but maybe it just caught me in the right mood. The year's best movie about large metal things crashing into each other and exploding.
STAR TREK - It partly goes against my long-held traditionalist belief that it's only Trek if William Shatner is in it, but this is a pretty exciting and entertaining look at the early years of the gang. How it all fits in with established canon I've no idea, though.
THE HORSEMAN - Incredibly grim, unflinching revenge movie (we had several revenge movies this year, of which this Australian offering was the best).
DISTRICT 9 - Good, meaty SF fun with some grungy gore and terrific effects, on a very low budget but more than imaginative enough to pull it off.

Honourable mentions should go to VALKYRIE, which works even though you know the ending; FERMAT'S ROOM, MOON, FROST/NIXON, G.I. JOE (I don't care, I enjoyed the hell out of it) and STATE OF PLAY. And some excellent festival shows which haven't got a release yet, including THE HOUSE OF THE DEVIL and THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO (my two favourite films of the summer FrightFest), and LEGENDARY ASSASSIN, a cracking throwback to 80s and 90s Hong Kong thudfests with wonderfully violent fight scenes and lots of stuntmen risking their all.

But no, it wasn't all wonderful or even fair to middling....

BRUNO - The very worst of the year: it doesn't matter whether it's offensive or not, because it's just not funny. It's embarrassing more than anything else. Unspeakable, to the extent I almost walked out.
HALLOWEEN II - Even by Rob Zombie's own infantile standards, this is tedious and tiresome, despite all the screaming and swearing and (indifferently photographed) bloodshed.
SYNECHDOCHE, NEW YORK - Endlessly pretentious bore that whinges and moans before disappearing up its own bottom at the end. I remember checking my watch while watching it and audibly remarked "oh God, there's two hours of this still to go".
ANTICHRIST - Beautifully photographed, granted, but it's full of bleating and whining and then some genital mutilation to finish, because.... well, no reason for it, really. Still, it got the Daily Mail in a tizzy.
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 123 - Everything that's great about the 1973 original is botched here, with uninteresting characters, the usual hyper editing, a dull score and lots of noise and swearing. Worst remake of the year.
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN - Please stop. It goes on forever, it's stupid, noisy, dull, and doesn't make sense. And whether it's racist or not with the jive-talkin' funny robot voices is way down the list of bad things.
GAMER - Maybe I should just copy and paste "stupid, noisy, dull" because it'd be quicker than typing it out every time. Rubbish.
THE STEPFATHER - The second worst remake of the year: it's a bland, harmless, safe and only mildly scary, comfortable horror film. That's not enough.
DOGHOUSE - Yes, I know everyone likes it, but I didn't; I didn't care one jot whether any of these sordid Neanderthal oafs lived or died, and Lesbian Vampire Killers was funnier and better made.
SORORITY ROW - It's glossily shot and it's full of attractive young women, true; but it's just another low grade campus slasher we've seen too many thousand times.

Dishonourable mentions to KNOWING, ANGELS AND DEMONS, THE FOURTH KIND, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE, PUBLIC ENEMIES and YEAR ONE. Of the as yet unreleased duffers, Dario Argento's disastrous GIALLO is sadly the most notable, and ZOMBIE WOMEN OF SATAN would surely qualify if I hadn't walked out after 20 minutes (the first time in over 25 years). And VAMPIRE GIRL VS FRANKENSTEIN GIRL left me with a headache.

So really it's not been a great year. I'm genuinely (and fairly obviously) hoping that 2010 is going to be a lot better.

Until the next time.

Richard.

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